the immortal Sayers in a battle some eight years
before.

The labour of keeping up the conversation in
the carriage chiefly upon the Australian
settler and the talkative Jew. The aristocracy
seemed shy. They were diffident, perhaps, of
their sporting knowledge, or were sleepy from
having been up all night.

“I saw a good fight in Melbourne,” said the
Australian, “about a week afore I left.”

“Did you?” returned the talkative Jew.

“There's a fortune there,” said the Australian,
confidently, “for any man about eight stun
nine.”

The drowsy fighting-man, with blighted
prospects, slowly opened one eye.

“There's no good man there,” continued the
Australian, “under nine stun.”

“How about Fibbing Billy?” asked the
talkative Jew.

“Used up.”

“Joss Humphrey?”

“Bounceable: wants it taken out of him.
Fights at ten stun; gives any man a stun, but
won't strip for less than a thousand pounds.”

“What name?” asked the blighted prize-
fighter, this time opening both eyes, and
becoming languidly interested in the conversation.

“Joss Humphrey,” answered the Australian
settler.

“Ah!” returned the blighted prize-fighter,
relapsing into drowsiness. Australia seemed a
long way off, and capital did not appear to be
forthcoming. It was an opening for a smart,
active young man, but he was not in a position
to avail himself of it.

“Nick Muffles could tackle him,” remarked
the talkative Jew, addressing himself, almost
confidentially, to the blighted prize-fighter.

“Ye-s,” was the drawling answer, finished off
with a yawn.

“Nick's clever,” said the Jew.

“Ah!” returned the prize-fighter.

“Ain't he artful?”

“Ah!”

“Don't he get away?”

“And keep away!”

“But ain't it smart?”

“Ah!”

After this favourable review of their absent
friends' fighting qualities, the blighted prize-
fighter made a few observations in praise of
Nature before he again closed his eyes. He
seemed to be an admirer of daybreak, and a lover
of gardens. The Australian kept up the
conversation with the Jew by inquiring after many
old prize-fighters whom he had known before
he emigrated. Some were dead, some had
thrived, some had disappeared. They were all
asked after by affectionate Christian names, like
many actors, and most comic singers. The
pugilistic profession seems never to have had
more than two “Misters” in its ranks; the late
ex-champion, “Mr.” Gully, M.P. for Pontefract;
and the late ex-champion, “Mr.” Jackson,
teacher of boxing, and one of the coronation
pages to King George the Fourth.

As our journey continued through Kent, and
into Surrey, we were amused by seeing many
official scarecrows, keeping up appearances by
being posted along the line. A lew blue-nosed
policemen at the stations; four other shivering
policemen under a clump of trees; a few
galloping police officers, taking equestrian
exercise on the coach-road below; represented
the winking majesty of the law. Their faces
showed the make-believe character of their
opposition to the exceptional event.

When, after a journey of two hours, we were
set down at the Farnborough station, it struck
me that no more appropriate fighting-ground
could have been chosen throughout England.
We were near the great military camp of Aldershot
—a place where thirty thousand warriors
are always studying how best to kill and to
destroy. They belong to a great European prize-
fighting association, which boasts of some three
millions of active members; by the side of whom
the puny company of professed pugilists sink
into contempt.

The appearance of our train, and of the
passengers who hurriedly alighted from it, was a
signal to some of the scared farmers to barricade
their dwellings. They knew that fifteen
hundred people might prove a dangerous invading
army, pushed along as they had been by the
strong metropolitan authorities into the feeble
arms of the local police.

A muddy tramp over half a mile of marshy
meadow land, where we had to jump over small
ditches, and struggle through hedges, brought
us, at last, to the field selected for the battle.
The stakes were driven in with wooden mallets,
and the ropes were adjusted by a veteran prize-
fighter, about seventy years old—a sage of a
hoary and venerable aspect. Around the ring,
when formed, we ranged ourselves in a very
eager, selfish, noisy, expectant, brutal mob.
There was no one man there who could say
I am more refined than my neighbour. For
the time being we were all equal, and our
country was anxiously waiting behind us to read
an account of everything we were about to see.
There were dukes, lords, marquises, clergymen,
actors, singers, managers, authors, reporters,
painters, and poets, mixed with plain country
gentlemen, military officers, legislators, lawyers,
barristers, merchants, card-sharpers, fathers of
families who brought their sons, thieves, fighting-
men, trainers, horse-dealers, doctors,
publicans, contractors, feather-weights, light-weights,
middle-weights, heavy-weights, Americans of all
classes, Irishmen of several classes, and Scotchmen
also. Scarcely an art, a profession, or a
class was unrepresented. Later in the morning,
when the country was aroused, we had farm
labourers, women, country girls, and little children,
a few policemen—still keeping up appearances
—and a country idiot, with helpless hands and
feeble legs and gaping mouth, who was the only
innocent, irresponsible spectator of the fight.
A number of active visitors swarmed up the
slender trees which surrounded the meadow,
whence they looked down upon the ring, like